


After they died (Or didn't)

by Tigresse



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Faked Suicide, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Mentions of Sex, POV Jim Moriarty, POV John Watson, POV Sebastian Moran, POV Sherlock Holmes, Some Humor, love and pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 08:47:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14690589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tigresse/pseuds/Tigresse
Summary: A series of POV's from all four leading characters, set a few weeks after the Barts rooftop incident where both geniuses 'died'





	After they died (Or didn't)

_**Year 2011 – John’s POV** _

 

It’s been a month.

 

Actually, 29 days, 7 hours and around thirty five minutes since I last saw him….. _alive_.

 

Funny thing is this - Since that fateful day I have seen him everywhere. Strange as it may sound, I don’t just ‘see’ him, I see the ‘version’ of him that I always craved for. A Sherlock who is not so occupied, not so busy, a lot needier, more of a together person and less of the distant man who lives inside his own head. I see him sitting on his usual chair and laughing at a TV show I always wanted to watch with him. I spot him in the bathroom, singing a popular ad jingle in his deep baritone voice and shaving. I see him in the bedroom sometimes, stretched out on the bed and snoring with his mouth slightly open.

 

He seems so real that I reach out to close his slack jaw. When my hand touches the sheets I go ‘ouch I am dreaming again’.

 

I don’t just see him indoors but also outdoors, on the streets, in supermarkets, in the tube, at my clinic, sometimes sitting right next to me in a taxi. Wearing his dark grey frock coat, his curls flying wild in the snippy London air, his eyes shining like two green pools of light, he charms all the way back into my heart and _makes me dream of a reality that doesn’t exist_. Then poof, he…..vanishes into thin air and leaves me with a reopened, fresh wound that starts to bleed into my soul again.

 

I wonder why his death has impacted me so much. I have known him for only two and half years and it was only towards the last six months that our relationship had become ‘sexual’. People have intimate relationships and close associations for far longer than that and don’t really go mad with grief like I have. Am I too soft? Or are most people too harsh and selfish? Is the whole ‘out of sight out of mind’ thing really applicable?

 

Every morning I wake up, I make it a point to take a quick look into his bedroom. Maybe he’s back. Maybe he’d be grinning at me and saying, ‘I am harrrd Jawn, quick before a client comes in and ruins the fun’.

 

This scenario had taken place several times between us, me waking up first to visit the bathroom and brew tea and he waking up a bit later and waiting for me in bed, naked, stroking his morning wood. I have to admit, that was the best way to start the day!

 

That moment on the Barts rooftop when he fell/jumped/lost his foothold, I don’t know really what to believe in, I had felt a strange pinching ache in my chest and numbness in my arms. Later this problem persisted and I sought medical advice, instead of self-diagnosis.

 

That doctor sent me to a shrink. I was subjected to many tests and questions and finally a ‘John H Watson’ file was created. Then the two convened and reconvened over my files and called me a patient of PTSD, nervous anxiety, high blood pressure and depression.

 

I laughed like a maniac when they shared this with me. Yeah, like really? As if these small things could hurt me when something horrific, like watching my Sherlock die before my eyes, didn’t kill me.

 

“You guys are forgetting I am a doctor too,” I kept laughing at the report but I was also aware of tears running down my cheeks. The shrink lady and doc man stared at me with sympathy, which prompted me to hide my feelings even more. “I am not suffering from any of these things,” I argued, “I just miss my friend a lot and wish I had taken his place in death. He shouldn’t have had to jump off to save my silly arse.” At that the two of them marked me as a victim of ‘hallucination’ too. Damn doctors, if I had not been one I would have blogged about this and read the comments with glee.

 

Except that I am never gleeful nowadays. Friends like Lestrade tell me I need to find something/someone else to forget what I had lost. I remember a famous quote by some person, can’t remember their name but the statement was awesome.

 

‘Trying to forget someone you knew is like trying to remember someone you never met’

 

Besides that irrefutable logic, there are other reasons for my current condition of loneliness and emptiness. I miss so many things about him that there’s no room for new things in my life. I remember so many things related to him that there’s no room for a new person either.

 

His violin.

His smile.

His voice.

His disastrous, loud experiments.

Body parts in the fridge.

The smell of cigarette in the flat.

His head on my chest sometime around dawn.

 

List goes on and on. I could go on and on.

 

Yeah, I could go on and on, without Sherlock. Fuck me. I must have a talent for survival.

 

I am living, but that doesn’t mean I am alive.

 

***

 

_**Sherlock’s POV** _

 

I watch them from a distance. Every Sunday they are there. Watching the spot where they think I am in a state of eternal rest.

 

If only they knew they were shedding tears over a dummy. Yeah, that’s what was placed in the coffin. Even the priest had no idea. Mycroft and his men are very stealthy, very good at their job. Somewhere in another cemetery in a different part of the city, there is an unmarked grave with a plain headstone that apparently ‘houses’ James Moriarty’s body. Even that is a dummy.

 

Everyone was fooled easily by Mycroft’s declaration ‘The deaths were too ghastly and the faces too gory for anyone to look at, it could be very distressing indeed’. Mummy and daddy played along, for the sake of their unconventional and eccentric children. But John, dear old Jawn, the only friend I have in this world, my heart bleeds for him. Jim was right, I do have a heart and it’s right where it should be, in my chest, slight left side, protected by the ribcage and above the….uhh, I digress! What I meant to say was that my chest aches a lot nowadays, somehow coinciding with those moments when I imagine the plight of poor John.

 

I see him eating alone at a café, I see him walking across the street with his hands thrust into his pockets, I watch him as he travels in the tube, I gaze at him as he buys milk from the supermarket. I can never tire of seeing him. But very soon this will stop. I will have to fly across the world to begin my main job, the reason I faked my death and went undercover. I need to take down Jimmy’s web.

 

Jimmy, did I say Jimmy, what’s wrong with me?

 

Yes, I am a confused man in his early thirties.

 

Again I digress.

 

Sometimes I am sure John spots me too, maybe just for a micro-millisecond. I am quick to disappear, like duck behind someone or a shelf, move away from my spot and crouch behind a trash can, quickly turn the corner and run till I am a block away. It always works. He doesn’t come after me so he must be thinking it was only his eyes playing tricks on him.

 

I wish he would come after me.

 

And Mycroft would be so angry he’d spit fire.

 

Oh that would be lovely!

 

Okay, I promise to stop digressing and stay focused on the topic. John.

 

One of the main reasons I kept him out of the loop and made it all look real and tragic to him was because his grief was a crucial aspect to the success of our plot. I knew people would keep an eye on him and if his grief seemed put on, fake, false, he would be in danger and our carefully crafted plot would turn to dust. Too much is at stake, I cannot afford to do anything rash or emotional. If I could, I’d go running back into his arms and enjoy the cuddles for hours. I never told him in as many words but I love the way he holds me. Often I pretended to be distressed, sick or unhinged simply so he would give me one of his assuring bear hugs and keep telling me it would all be okay at the end.

 

Poor John must be needing those hugs himself. What if I…..

 

I am tempted. I am seriously tempted. As I stand across the street, smoking a cigarette while concealing myself behind a large food truck (thankfully the owners are on a break and services are on hold for a while, leaving me standing there in peace), I can see his silhouette at the window. He is in the room _I shared with him_ , or _a room he shared with me_ , I don’t know how to define it. That room has so many memories sticking to its walls and floor and ceiling that it could seriously seem like a time travelling machine for dear John. Why the hell is he there, reliving those memories and hurting himself in the bargain.

 

 _Go to your room John, even better go to a different place to stay_.

 

For a moment he peeks out of the window. Did he sense my presence? Why is he looking intently in my direction then?

 

I think of taking a step forward. Maybe I could meet him and tell him the truth. Maybe he could fly out and see me for a brief while in India, or Singapore, or Australia. So far from here that nobody would ever know! I am tempted so much that I am already rehearsing what to say to him, how to say it, how to soothe his frayed nerves first and then apologize profusely later. I can do it. I know I am not being watched and tonight, neither is he.

 

I trip and hit a lamp post, hard. Ouch, my head!

 

At the almost same moment he tries to peer out a bit too far and hits his head on the window pane. Oh that must be an ouch moment too.

 

I giggle as I watch him rub the sore spot just as I rub mine. Even while separated, we are in some way connected, joined at the hip.

 

That is precisely when realization dawns on me like a thousand flashing lightbulbs in my face. We are but two bodies and one soul. Even if I am a million miles away I will still be connected to him. John is nothing without Sherlock and Sherlock without John is just an empty shell.

 

My phone buzzes. I almost do a facepalm when I see Jim’s text. Oh damn it, I had almost forgotten the time. It was really late.

 

_“Where is my food you posh bastard? Do you want my help with the web or not?”_

 

“See you in two years Jawn,” I mumble and walk a lonely path ahead to pick up Chinese takeaway for a very cranky, unhinged ‘former’ criminal mastermind.

 

***

 

_**Sebastian’s POV** _

I hate him.

 

The more I think about what he’s done the more I hate him. Earlier I was angry, now I am literally boiling with rage. Only a few days ago he was with me, in this house, in my arms, in my life. Now, the situation has changed. He’s there but I can’t speak to him, can’t see him, can’t communicate with him. Nope, he hasn’t turned into a ghost yet (though I would have loved to turn into one by beating him to a pulp). He has decided that apparently it’s all right for him to take off on a project for two years and keep me out of loop on it.

 

As if that was not enough, he added insult to the injury by revealing, via a letter, that this new project of yours is with that confounded detective. ‘Sorry Sebby Tigerr, but he has a beautiful face and I kinda flipped for his plan’ is one of the lines he wrote. I beg to differ, in fact I differ with pride and conviction here. That fellow is not beautiful by any assumptions. He looks like an alien. If you take off those curls (is that a wig, I must someday pull it and check) and show him as an egghead I swear they will call NASA and report an alien invasion. Or they might even start looking for a UFO nearby.

 

But I am sure Sherlock fucking Holmes didn’t put a gun to his head and force him to agree. If there is someone to be blamed, it’s Jim.

 

My Jim.

 

Nope, how can he be _my Jim_ if I am the _last_ one who gets to know things.

 

The night before he faked his death on the Barts rooftop, we made love for almost three hours. I made him cum so many times he would have lost count. By the end of the it, exhausted as we were, he kept rubbing his nose and chest and knees against me, like a baby koala.

 

“No more,” I had said, “I can’t….”

 

“Oh you have no idea how much you can stretch your limits Tigerr.”

 

“Let’s sleep for two hours and I’ll be back with more sperm for you!!!”

 

“Try to understand, sometimes we have lesser time than we think we do. After years of working with me, you know one thing for sure……..”

 

“No I don’t.”

 

He had given me a puzzled look, to which I had replied “With you one can never know anything for sure.”

 

His expression had been one of glee and evil repartee. Rolling over to face me, he had wrapped his slender arms around me and clutched at me with his small hands (he is a neat little thing, make no mistake I wouldn’t have it any other way). “Just suppose, hypothetically, if I were to go away for a few days and you have to manage UK and Ireland entirely on your own,” he threw a leg over me and pinned me down in more ways than one, “Take all decisions and recruit all the members, parley with the cops and political parties and handle the escalations from the client, would you be up for it?”

 

“I do half of that already and occasionally I have done the whole nine yards too, haven’t I?”

 

“Yeah, but not more than a week.”

 

“How long would you be gone for?”

 

“Mmmm, more than the usual.”

 

That was the annoying thing about Jim. He never gave straight or complete answers. I once saw a series of text conversations between him and that detective, hilarious at best and brain frying at worst, with a list of hundred and fifty odd questions from both sides. Then I almost died when I realized that half of those questions were also ‘answers’. Rhetoric at its finest or simply two madmen indulging each other, we’d never know.

 

“Give me a proper answer,” I had demanded, “In days or hours and…..Jimmy?”

 

He was snoring.

 

I made the worst mistake at that point. I fell asleep thinking we would talk when we both woke up or, if that got missed due to one of us waking before the other, we’d catch up later in the day or evening when we met.

 

Instead I woke up to an empty bed and, later in the day, heard on television that Jim had shot himself in the mouth and died on the spot, followed by Sherlock who had met his end by jumping off the rooftop.

 

I saw my team, various web members, my closest aides, rally at my side thinking I was going to do something totally crazy. Instead I was laughing hysterically. They were so taken aback that one of them had tears in their eyes. “Don’t worry fellas,” I said finally, “I am fine.”

 

They gave me that look of pity which I hated.

 

Love me, hate me, ignore me, I don’t care. Don’t fucking pity me. I wear my scars with pride and celebrate my failures with optimism, knowing things would only get better hereon. Nothing, absolutely nothing gets me down.

 

So at that point I found their sympathetic looks comical. If only they knew how wrong they were. Jim was not dead. Neither was Sherlock. I was putting two and two together, based on Jim’s strange words to me the night before. The little fucker and that detective have both faked their deaths. I could see their faces as they enacted the elaborate hoax and my laughter grew louder. People around me gasped and shook with nerves.

 

If only they knew that my laughter was one of relief and not of madness of grief. It was tough going back to the empty house, waking up to silence, going to sleep alone and not hearing his voice at least three times a day, but I got on somehow. I had a job to do. London was in my hands and much as I hated to admit it, it wasn’t easy managing the web without his expert advice. Even when the man did very little, his presence could still be felt. One tiny action of his had a huge impact on our success.

 

In a month’s time I started bombarding him with texts.

 

_I know you are alive – SM_

_Where did you get all that blood from – SM_

_Did that curly haired Sherly tremble in his polka dot boxers when he had to jump – SM_

_I had searched his flat per your instructions. That’s how I know he wears polka dotted underwear – SM_

_Is Mycroft Holmes in on this plan – SM_

_So you will now be with him for some time – SM_

_He won’t be me. He won’t do any of those things for you – SM_

_Reference to earlier texts, I didn’t just mean kinks – SM_

_Why can’t you reply. Nobody checks this line. This is anonymous – SM_

_I had to execute a client today because he inadvertently started giving information about us to his fiancée, who is politically connected – SM_

_A liquor baron propositioned me today. Says he will become a bottom for me. He is going to give us an island in Bahamas – SM_

_I said no, by the way – SM_

_The web is fine Jimmy. You will find it in the same shape as if used to be earlier. I am keeping a low profile though, don’t want Mycroft to know I know everything. I do know everything, don’t I? Or am I missing something? – SM_

 

He didn’t reply but that didn’t bother me at all. I had various ways of putting the facts and figures together and while I am no genius at a Jim level I am no dumbass either. This number was alive and active, he had been receiving and reading my texts but not blocking me or cancelling the number, what else could this mean other than his willingness to stay in touch. One-sided communication if you ask me, nevertheless it’s better than stopping all channels of keeping the contact alive. Therefore I have started giving him information about the web, about our rivals, about our clients. Maybe it will help him in some way.

 

I realize I will be his personal 24/7 lackey, no matter what he does to me.

 

I do miss him. I miss his warm body in my arms, his lips on my neck, his soft voice singing in the shower, his needy demands in the kitchen while I cook, his sharp words and insults when I goof up. I miss seeing his tiny frame through the open door to the home office, where only an emptiness and silence remains.

 

But I have kept everything the way they should be. One day he will be back. And his throne and his Sebby would be waiting for him.

 

You see, he was just a criminal mastermind to you. For me he was my friend, partner, mate, lover and boyfriend.

 

I don’t hate him. I was lying. I love him.

 

***

 

**_Jim’s POV_ **

 

I wake up to find myself cold and shivering.

 

I hear the London Symphony Orchestra next to me and think for a moment that I had fallen asleep at some concert. Then I realize that I am in the bedroom at the secret hideout Sherlylocks and I are sharing for the past few weeks and the noises are coming from four sources. The rain beating down on the windowpane, Sherlock snoring, the alarm beeping and the neighbor’s cat meowing.

 

I shake my nemesis awake and ask him to stop snoring and switch off the alarm. He snaps at me saying I should use ear plugs. We have a fight and then give each other the silent treatment. I end up having cold cereal in the kitchen alone and it occurs to me that I actually miss that dumb brute Sebastian. He would have never let me go cold and cramped up. He would have pulled the covers over me even if I had kicked them down. And most definitely he would have switched off the bloody alarm. As for the cat, Sherlock did take care of that though. He made an impromptu muzzle and silenced the feline since it was bothering him too.

 

But I realized one important thing. Sherlock was me, but he wasn’t Sebastian. And I needed a Sebastian, I didn’t need another me.

 

One night I lay in wait outside the house we shared on Conduit Street, waiting for him to return home. Suddenly I heard the roar of a powerful engine and the ‘zoooooom’ sound of a motorbike passing by at the speed of light. Colonel Sebastian Moran was home, back from a day’s back-breaking work. Stupid bugger still rides his Ducati. No matter how many times I asked him to use one of the fleet of cars we owned, he would still use his Ducati or his Harley Davidson to commute. The quintessential alpha poster boy on a monstrous, fast two-wheeler. The stuff made of dreams for females, all muscle and sweat and virility, all about controls and suave charm.

 

Lay off ladies. He likes cock.

 

I watched him as he walked towards the elevators, then stopped and stared at the spot where my favorite limo used to be parked. I know he has put the limo into the Thames. That was his way of getting back at me for leaving him in the lurch.

 

If only he knew…..

 

If only he knew this was all for him, for us. As Sherlock and I played the game, Mycroft appeared on the horizon like a referee, like an official who wanted the game to be played his way. To say we were both surprised would have been an understatement.

 

The offer was good and for once I thought from the brain and the heart.

 

_Leave London and England alone. Help Sherlock take down your web. Spin a new web in the shadows where none of us can see it. Let Mycroft earn his knighthood and Sherlock his space in London. Go and get the rest of the world and we make a pact to leave each other alone afterwards. I don’t interfere in the drug den you sponsor in Venezuela, or the shady liquor baron you support in Austria, the mafia boss you create in Hong Kong or the political assassination you organize in China. You don’t set foot in London, take on a new identity, and live and let live._

 

Those were the terms of the MI5 and MI6 boss.

 

Sherlock had only one condition. That we would be together for most of the time it takes to _dismantle_ my web. He wanted to learn more about me.

 

It worked for me. After this a legitimate life awaited me and Sebby. I was doing this for him. Two years of separation would result in a lifetime of happiness and togetherness. Wasn’t that what he wanted? I was never for conventions and traditions, normalcy and ordinary joys. Those were his fetishes and I was looking out for him, for our future. But had I told him my plan the thick-headed dumbass blonde would have never seen reason, never agreed to support me.

 

So I did what I had to.

 

But with passing time the truth had begun to hurt me too. I realized that for a long time I wouldn’t get to eat the shepherd’s pie he made so lovingly for me that I devoured it even if it was always a bit too salty for my taste. I wouldn’t be laughing while he climbed on the bed and crawled towards me with his cheeks caked with shaving foam, saying something silly like ‘I am marinating my beard so it comes off easily’, when the truth was that he was too horny to see my just woken look and wanted to fuck me. I wouldn’t come home to him playing the guitar, to his call of ‘That you Jimmy boss’ or relax in those huge arms of his while I sniffed his unique scent and the Aqua di Gio cologne that he is partial to.

 

Lot of ordinary, day to day, simple things. But I’d miss them like crazy.

 

I watched him stare at the empty parking spot, head bowed, hands clasped together as if in prayer, his eyes downbeat and sad, his posture more of a defeated puppy than the lion of a man I have always considered him to be.

 

For a moment I am tempted to reveal myself. To tell him I am alive. I have got his texts. Every single one of them. I have typed responses but never sent them. I want to tell him ‘Come with me, we will do this together, you just have to let Sherlock be a part of it too’.

 

I know he would listen to me, do it for my sake.

 

But then that would compromise our future.

 

Sometimes when a glass breaks, you can glue it back together but it will never be the same again. It won’t be the original beauty it once was. Instead it would be a pale likeness of its former self, with jagged edges, its beauty drained by the cuts and marks, some parts missing.

 

Not to mention, while gluing some of the biggest shards together you might end up damaging them some more.

 

That’s when I decided this couldn’t be done. He had to wait. _I knew he would wait._

 

I thought I had made him what he was today by carefully stitching together various aspects of his past. The truth couldn’t be farther than that. Somewhere down the line it was _he who had me what I am today_ , stitching together all the dreams he had for our future.


End file.
